Martin Dempster: Couples’ strategy a tip for Watson

Fred Couples. Picture: Getty

MARTIN DEMPSTER

TOM Watson is likely to leave no stone unturned in his bid to vindicate being re-appointed as Ryder Cup captain. Yet, it was surprising to hear Fred Couples reveal during a chat at the Dubai Desert Classic that he’d not been contacted by the great man thus far as the countdown clock to Gleneagles starts to tick louder by the day.

Okay, so Watson is his own man. In fact, just about every Ryder Cup captain over the past decade or so, both European and American, has seemed intent on doing the job squarely on their beliefs and principles rather than leaning on past experiences, either good or bad, of predecessors.

At a time when the United States – the event, too, it could be argued – badly needs a victory, having tasted defeat in seven of the last nine matches, it seems madness that Couples’ input would be wasted heading into the event’s first staging in Scotland since the 1973 joust at Muirfield.

We are talking, after all, about the man that has led the Americans to three successive Presidents Cup wins, the latest coming at Muirfield Village, and, therefore, knows better than anyone what it takes to get Uncle Sam’s boys to transfer their undoubted individual ability into a team environment. Intriguingly, Couples revealed he’d got the best out of his players by effectively becoming a text pest to the likes of Jordan Spieth. Instead of talking to them on the phone, he bombarded with them with text messages to try and figure out their mindset.

“I’m a big texter so I’d text them and, if they answered, I’d tease them for 30 minutes. And, after 30 minutes of getting them to tell me stuff via texts, it was very easy to figure, for example, that Spieth was ready to go and he liked Steve Stricker and Steve Stricker liked him,” he said. “If I’d been talking to Spieth, he’s not going to tell me he’s nervous or doesn’t want to play with this or that guy. But, if you text them enough, they are bound to say something useful.”

A perennial problem for the American captain in Ryder Cups has been trying to find a partner for Tiger Woods, the task having delivered only mild success and, in the case of Hal Sutton’s decision to pair him with Phil Mickelson for the opening session at Oakland Hills in 2004, spectacular failure.

On the back of them gelling so well in that most recent Presidents Cup win, though, it seems inevitable that Woods will have Matt Kuchar at his side stepping on to the first tee in Perthshire, while the same surely goes for Mickelson and Keegan Bradley after they were largely responsible for putting the Americans in the winning position they ultimately blew in the last Ryder Cup.

“I’m pretty sure Woods/Kuchar and Mickelson/Bradley will play every match at Gleneagles, though that might depend on whether Phil or Tiger wants a rest,” noted Couples, who said his own winning formula was more down to decisions taken by the players themselves than him.

“I don’t choose pairings – the players have come to me to tell me who’d they like to play with,” he added. “As soon as two players agree they want to play together, that makes a good team.”

Using his own friendship with Davis Love as an example, he went on: “Him and I didn’t play that many matches together and that’s very weird to me. But we were younger then and didn’t have the guts to say ‘we need to play together’ to guys like Ray Floyd, Hale Irwin and even Tom Watson.

“With me, I tell the players ‘if you are mad at me tell me; if you have a suggestion let me know what it is’. But that certainly doesn’t make me a better captain than anyone else.”

Couples described Watson as “totally different” to him in terms of approach to a captaincy but is adamant the golfing senior citizen’s appointment is “no gamble” on behalf of the PGA of America.

“Whereas I can’t change and be serious and kinda strict and stern, Tom Watson is more of a serious student of everybody,” he opined. “I think he’s going to think he knows most of the players, but it’s going to be hard because I don’t know how many he really, really knows. But he’s got a few months to go to tournaments and I’m sure he will have a few dinners and meet the guys, get to know them and figure out what to do.”

Watson will have it figured out, for sure, and so, too, according to Couples, will Woods by the time the Masters comes around in just under two months’ time. The world No 1 may have made his worst start to a season since turning pro in 1997 but one of his closest friends insists it’s way too early for Woods to be concerned about his game.

“Is he playing his best? No. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out,” admitted Couples. “But, if he gets to Doral, Bay Hill and Augusta and if he’s not playing good in those, then I would be shocked.

“It’s so easy to pick on him because you guys are doing what you’re supposed to do – you’re talking about the best player in the world. Just give him a little room and come Augusta, Sunday night – if he doesn’t play well – then you can say all of these things he didn’t do and the swing is not right. But it will be right.”

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

The Scotsman provides news, events and sport features from the Edinburgh area. For the best up to date information relating to Edinburgh and the surrounding areas visit us at The Scotsman regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website The Scotsman requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.